THERESA RAMASHAMOLAImprisoned for Life (Original biographical information included with her bracelet in 1988)

Theresa Ramashamola was tried in the Pretoria Supreme Court along with Mojalefa Sefatsa, Reid Mokoena, Oupa Diniso, Duma Khumalo, and Francis Mokhesi. The five men and one woman, commonly known as the Sharpeville Six, were charged with the September 1984 murder of Jacob Dlamini, a Lekoa township councilor. The six were convicted and sentenced to death in December 1985 for their alleged “association with the crowd” that killed Dlamini, although the trial judge and appeals court acknowledged that there was no direct evidence they were involved in the murder. Dlamini was killed by an angry crowd on the first day of the Vaal uprising when he refused to join a protest march against rent increases and instead pulled out a gun and fired on the demonstrators. Thousands of people were involved in the protest and at least one hundred people participated in the attack on Dlamini. The appeal court ruled that as part of the crowd, the six were responsible for Dlamini’s death even though their own actions did not cause it. Theresa was accused of inciting the crowd to kill Dlamini and not of participating in the attack herself. A single unnamed witness, who the defense described as unreliable, said he overheard her saying, ‘He’s shooting, let’s kill him’ when Dlamini opened fire on the crowd. Ramashamola denied this. She said she had attended part of the march – in fact she was hit on the head by a police rubber bullet earlier the same morning. However, the crowd outside Dlamini’s house was dispersed by police using teargas and it was only later that he was attacked and killed. In November 1984, when Ramashamola was arrested, she was stripped and tortured with electric shocks. She suffered further injury during the course of the trial when her arm was broken in a police vehicle. A number of co-accused also suffered torture before and during the trial. The state’s evidence linking the accused to the scene of the killing was weak and contradictory. The unreliability of this evidence was a subject raised by the defense both in the trial and on appeal. In particular, one state witness who implicated two of the accused, subsequently made a statement to a solicitor saying that police torture forced him to give false evidence. International public pressure from December 1985 to November 1988 played a significant role in delaying the execution of the Sharpeville Six. The United Nations Security Council called on South Africa to commute the death sentences of the Six, saying the matter had caused international condemnation. Appeals for clemency had been made over the 3 years Theresa and the others were on death row, by UN Secretary General Perez de Cuellar, President Reagan, British Prime Minister Thatcher, West German Chancellor Kohl, French Prime Minister Chirac, and Amnesty International. The conservative Daily Telegraph of Britain said that to hang six people merely for having been in the vicinity of the murder was not retribution, but the same crime six times over. Although he had turned down clemency before, South African President P.W. Botha commuted the death sentences of the Sharpeville Six on November 23, 1988. The group instead will serve prisoner terms ranging from 18 to 25 years. Theresa Ramashamola was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment and is currently the woman serving the longest sentence in South Africa. Theresa was born in Sharpeville in 1960. In fact, her mother, Mrs. Julia Ramashamola was part of the huge crowd that converged on the Sharpeville police station on March 21, 1960. The demonstration was part of a campaign of peaceful defiance intended to end the pass laws, which regulated the movement of blacks. The police opened fire on the crowd and 69 people were killed and 186 wounded; many of them shot in the back. Mrs. Ramashamola, three months pregnant with Theresa was uninjured. Twenty-four years later in Sharpeville, on September 3, 1984, her daughter was struck on the head by a rubber bullet as she took part in a protest against rent increases. ___________The source of this biographical information is from International Defence and Aid Fund’s bi-monthly publication, Focus, No74, 1988, I.D.A.F.’s New Notes, No.35, 1988, and an article in the New York Times, July 13, 1988. We appreciate their permission to use this material.